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Daddy Longlegs Risk Life…and Especially Limb…to Survive
We all know it’s not nice to pull the legs off bugs. Luckily for entomology researcher Ignacio Escalante, he doesn’t have to. In the Elias Lab at UC Berkeley, he studies daddy longlegs, the harmless...
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There’s Something Fishy About These Trees …| Deep Look
Video Produced by Josh Cassidy. For salmon lovers in California, October is “the peak of the return” when hundreds of thousands of Chinook salmon leave the open ocean and swim back to their ancestral...
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These Whispering, Walking Bats Are Onto Something
It’s October. Seen any bats yet? If you plan on going to a costume party or out trick-or-treating this year, you will. Vampire bats are everywhere during Halloween. But unlike so many other other icons...
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With California Drought Over, Fewer Sierra Pines Dying
After five years of drought in which more than 100 million trees died in California — mostly ponderosa pines attacked by tiny bark beetles in the Sierra Nevada — aerial surveys this summer revealed...
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The Lonely Call of the Last San Francisco Quail
On a wet August morning Alan Hopkins walks briskly around the dirt pathways of Golden Gate Park. This is where, a few months before, he last heard the sound: a resonant “cow‐cow‐cow,” the call of a...
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The Scientist Who Fell in Love With the Ignobly Named Sea Slug
It was 1968, and Terry Gosliner and Gary Williams were late for high school graduation practice. That day was one of the lowest Bay Area tides in decades and the tide pools of Duxbury Reef in Bolinas...
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Our 10 Most Read Science Stories of 2017
From drought, to floods, to getting liquefied when you die, we look back at the most read KQED science stories of 2017. Before and After: The Rain’s Impact on Three California Reservoirs Folsom Lake on...
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Sea Stars Make Comeback After Syndrome Killed Millions
Starfish are making a comeback on the West Coast, four years after a mysterious syndrome killed millions of them. From 2013 to 2014, Sea Star Wasting Syndrome hit sea stars from British Columbia to...
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Why the Male Black Widow Spider Is a Real Home Wrecker
These are the longest nights of the year, which is good news for nocturnal animals like the black widow spider, which prefers to slink around in the darkness, hiding in obscure places like inside pipes...
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This Giant Plant Looks Like Raw Meat and Smells Like Dead Rat
For a plant that emits an overpowering stench of rotting carcass, you’d think the corpse flower would have a PR problem. But it’s quite the opposite: Anytime a corpse flower opens up at a botanical...
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For Pacific Mole Crabs It’s Dig or Die
Among the surfers and beach-casting anglers, there’s a new visitor to San Francisco’s Ocean Beach shoreline. Benjamin McInroe is there for only one reason — to find Pacific mole crabs, creatures...
View ArticleScience Says: European Art Scene Began with Neanderthals
From the murky depths of Spanish caves comes a surprising insight: Neanderthals created art. That’s been proposed before, but experts say two new studies finally give convincing evidence that our...
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Scientists Aim To Pull Peer Review Out Of The 17th Century
The technology that drives science forward is forever accelerating, but the same can’t be said for science communication. The basic process still holds many vestiges from its early days — that is the...
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So … Sometimes Fireflies Eat Other Fireflies
Most of the blinking signals that fireflies send out are intended to attract mates. But researchers are finding that, in some cases, these romantic overtures are not all wine and roses. Females of one...
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The Contentious Future of Point Reyes — Here’s What You Need to Know
On a rocky peninsula with sweeping views of the Pacific Ocean, an hour north of San Francisco, cows, tule elk, and people have shared the land for several hundred years — but lately, with growing...
View ArticleThose Reports That Astronaut Scott Kelly’s DNA Changed — They’re Wrong
Following several misleading news reports that claimed 7 percent of an identical twin’s DNA changed after he spent one year in space, rendering them no longer identical, NASA reissued the press release...
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How Ticks Dig In With a Mouth Full of Hooks
Spring is here. Unfortunately for hikers and picnickers out enjoying the warmer weather, the new season is prime time for ticks, which can transmit bacteria that cause Lyme disease. How they latch on —...
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Take Two Leeches And Call Me In The Morning
Video produced by Josh Cassidy Leeches get a bad rap — but they might not deserve it. Yes, they’re creepy crawly bloodsuckers. And they can instill an almost primal sense of disgust and revulsion....
View ArticleMonster Animals: Does ‘Rampage’ Get the Science of CRISPR Right?
We here at STAT cover CRISPR a lot. But it’s not every day we get to cover Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. The Rock and the genome-editing technology meet in a new movie, “Rampage,” coming out Friday....
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The Mystery of the Upside-Down Catfish
Normally, an upside-down fish in your tank is bad news. As in, it’s time for a new goldfish. That’s because most fish have an internal air sac called a swim bladder that allows them to control their...
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